Book Review: The Sage Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion

Jan Baetens, Rebuilding Story Worlds: The Obscure Cities by Schuiten and Peeters (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020). 198 pp. ISBN: 978-1-97880-847-8 ($29.95)Philippe Delisle, La BD au prisme de l’Histoire: Hergé, Maurras, les Jésuites et quelques autres… (Paris: Karthala, 2019). 206 pp. ISBN: 978-2-8111-2608-7 (€18.00)Kim A. Munson, ed., Comic Art in Museums (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020). 386 + xii pp. ISBN 978-1-4968-2807-1 ($30)Paul Fisher Davies, Comics as Communication: A Functional Approach (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 338 pp. ISBN: 978-3-030-29722-0 (eBook: €50.28)Sean Eedy, Four-Color Communism: Comics Books and Contested Power in the German Democratic Republic (New York: Berghahn Books, 2021). 218 pp. ISBN: 978-1-80073-000-7 ($120)

classifies theories of religion under four headings: substantive, functional, verstehende, and formal. These headings allow him to explore major developments and key figures in the history of the sociology of religion. He also points out that definitions of religion are frequently challenged by modern developments such as online religion, spirituality, and post-institutional religion. He also notes that anthropologists have been more inclined than sociologists to abandon the category of religion as an essentially Western notion. His entry is supplemented by various entries on Religion and Health, Religion and Science, and Religion in China. The Encyclopedia also has entries on Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Individual churches-the Anglican Church, Baptist Church, and so forth are also included alongside movements such as Boko Harem and Apocalyptic Movements. The ideas of religion and the sociology of religion are further explored in entries on Bellah, Berger, Durkheim, Martin, Otto, Weber, and Wilson-where a student would find relevant material.
While there may be some general agreement that the so-called Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) provide the basic framework for understanding what is generally meant by religion, the problem becomes more acute of course in comparative religious studies, where, for example, scholars have argued that Confucianism is a political ideology of governance or that Buddhism is essentially an atheist belief system. Fortunately, the Encyclopedia has excellent entries on these two Asian religions where many of the problems of definition are carefully reviewed and resolved. Many new religions, especially in Asia, challenge even a comprehensive understanding of religion. In Vietnam, Cao Dai is a syncretic religious movement that began in 1926 and now has a following of around 4.4 million. It has a complex belief system, and its pantheon includes, among others, Joan of Arc, Muhammed, Moses, Louis Pasteur, and Lenin. The Encyclopedia has an entry under Caodaism. Other modern developments further expand the possibilities. For example, there is an entry on Digital Religion which distinguishes between religion online which is merely an extension of religion offline. Online religion, it is argued, has opened up a new world of religious ideas, practice, and experience.
While the Encyclopedia provides an intelligent guide to the conceptual complexity surrounding the idea of religion alongside entries, for example, on Charisma, Religious Experience, Ritual, and Sacred, nevertheless, a student coming fresh to the world of the sociology of religion might be excused for asking "what is it about?" There is no entry on "the sociology of religion" which might have been helpful for a confused student. The Encyclopedia opts for an alternative which is to offer entries on academic associations such as the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). An entry specifically on the sociology of religion, its history, and developments might have raised the more general philosophical question as to whether a discipline rooted in a secular tradition of research-Weber described himself as "religiously unmusical"-could actually make sense of religion. In Weber's own language, can sociology ultimately understand religious belief and practice? Of course, many sociologists are religious in the sense of having religious membership and some sociologists have been ministers or priests. A good example is Andrew Greeley, a Roman Catholic priest, who wrote extensively on modern Catholicism. His entry in the Encyclopedia indicates that he did not shy away from controversial issues such as The Making of Popes (Greeley 1979). Many of the issues I have raised here are explored by Kees de Groot in the entry on Theology which explores both competition and cooperation between theologians and sociologists.
As the Encyclopedia indicates, the SSSR had complicated, albeit amicable, relationships with various research clusters that had closer relationships with religion in general or with denominational associations such as the American Catholic Association. At various stages in the emergence of a scientific sociology of religion, there have been alternative options such as "religious sociology" which is associated with mission studies in the Roman Catholic Church which sought to understand, among other things, the decline of adherence to Catholic belief and practice in given parishes. Outside the Catholic tradition, one can occasionally find sociology publications referring to religious sociology. I suspect by accident rather than design, Herberg's (1965) famous study of generational changes in religious identity had the title Protestant Catholic Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. Apart from implying there is such a thing as religious sociology, there was no Islam in the United States. The more complex problem, outside the province of sociology, is the question as to whether "Christian Scholarship" is, to refer to Marsden's (1997) famous publication, an "outrageous idea"? I assume the editors had long discussions about the merits or otherwise of entries on religion, sociology of religion, and religious sociology. In their brief introduction, they allude to many of the problems confronting the ambition to be comprehensive and inclusive. Given the many transformations of religion in modern societies, the editors have, as I have indicated, included a range of entries that might, on common sense grounds, fall under religion such as Civil Religion, Invisible Religion, Lived Religion, Piety and Pietism, and Spirituality, and entries that might be seen as adjacent to or contrasted with religion such as Atheism, Humanism, and Witchcraft. With inevitable difficulties in mind, this Encyclopedia is remarkably successful in both scope and depth.
The Encyclopedia, as one might expect, has numerous entries on the sociologists whose contributions were formative and enduring. These include the usual suspects from classic theories such as Durkheim, James and Weber, and post-World War II contributors from Acquaviva to Yinger. It also includes major theories such as Rational Choice Theory, Supply Side Theory, and Systems Theory. There are also entries on research methods including Big Data Analysis, Discourse Analysis, and Spatial Analysis. There is an extensive list of entries under Social Issues and Religion such as Abortion, Death, Eugenics, Globalization, and Youth.
One could easily imagine that the Encyclopedia with two Western men as editors could be accused of bias with respect to other religions and feminist perspectives. The editors have not to my mind exposed themselves to such criticism. They cannot be easily accused of Western bias. There are ample entries on African Religions, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Tenrikyo, Shinto, and Zoroastrianism. With regards to gender issues, there are entries on Gender, Sexuality, LGBTQI* People, and Religion. There is an entry on Marian Apparitional Movements, but no entry on the wider and more significant cult of Mary and Mariology. There are entries on Mary Douglas, Barbara Hargrove, and Marie Augusta Neal. The editors may yet be accused of failing to include more influential women writing on religion such as Judith Butler, Helene Cixous, and Donna Haraway. These authors were not, in a professional sense, sociologists, but nevertheless their work has had an impact on feminist sociology. There is no entry on the religious roots of patriarchy.
It could be reasonably assumed that an encyclopedia would favor a conventional and conservative list of entries. Possamai and Blasi have decided otherwise by including a range of entries that point to new developments and trends within the field of study. The decision to aim for modern issues can be instanced by Intersectionality, Hyper-Real Religion, McDonaldization, Postmodernism, Post Secular Society, and Multiple Modernities. There are also entries on Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault.
Despite the search for completeness, there are inevitable gaps and topics that are treated too briefly. There are various anthropologists, sociologists, or writers who are, to my mind, missing from the entries: Charles Darwin and Darwinism, Ernest Gellner on Islam, Karl Jaspers (but see "Axial Age"), and Friedrich Nietzsche and the Death of God. There are various topics that arguably deserve an entry: Black Religion, Black Church, Occidentalism, or Public Religions (pace José Casanova). Although this Encyclopedia is extensive and ambitious, some entries are too limited to do justice to the subject matter. Although the entry on Politics and Religion is perfectly scholarly, it requires more space to consider religion and political parties, church-state relations, religion and sovereignty, and the role of religion in the legitimacy of power. Given the growing literature on religion and populism, the Encyclopedia could have an entire entry on the subject given, for example, Donald Trump's courtship of evangelical Christians. Such an extended entry could include the influence of Carl Schmitt's notion of the friend-foe dynamic and its impact on the Spanish populist movement Podemos or Schmitt's influential notion of political theology. As this Encyclopedia appears in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps an entry on politics and theodicy would have been relevant.
If the editors have sufficient energy to oversee a revised edition at some stage in the future, these issues can be easily resolved. Finally, and to return to my opening comments, given that an encyclopedia cannot in reality achieve completeness, the editors deserve our thanks for this comprehensive and illuminating two-volume study of the sociology of religion.